Posted 23 May 2012 at 15:14 UTC (updated 23 May 2012 at 15:15 UTC) by sye

"Turduckens and iphones may seem like silly metaphors, but they reveal, in familiar and concrete terms, Everett’s errors in logic (arguing from irrelevant data) and in understanding (the crucial distinction between linguistic hardware versus its use in a given language). This does not bode well."

Simply showing up in court on my behalf, without even speaking, let alone testifying in any way, might convince the Honorable Daniel Stahnke that I do not present a risk of Jumping Bail.

That would enable my desperately-anxious Mother, Patricia A. Crawford, to obtain a refund of the $50,000.00 Cash Bail she posted on my behalf, after I was arrested for living by the words of The Reverend Doctor Marting Luther King Junior, by complying with my "moral responsbility to disobey unjust laws", thereby staging a sit-in between the two halves of the folding front door the C-Tran #105 Salmon Creek Express at the Salmon Creek Park-and-Ride just North of Vancouver, for which I was arrested for Misdemeanor Disorderly Conduct on Friday, January 13.

I myself dialed 9-1-1 that the Emergency Dispatcher send a Deputy who might supply the belligerent and slothful bus driver and I some manner of amicable solution to our dispute over my assertion that he Suffered the Deadly Sin of Sloth for having the bright idea that it was better to drive a late bus completely devoid of passengers so as to make up for his extreme tardiness, than to transport two freezing cold public transport patrons who'd been waiting for the #105 for more than an hour.

For my contribution to today's social discourse, and despite my cry of "Don't Tase Me, Bro!", Clark County Sheriff's Deputy Prather - who I really do think the world of - jolted me once with his Taser, then, upon finding I was a Trained Professional Driving on a Closed Course - that is, that I am a Physicist and my father was a Electrical Engineer, and so do not regard even 800,000 Volt Alternating Current electrical shocks to not be that big a deal provided that shock's current is quite low, Tased me yet again, only to find me still refusing to get off that Damn bus unless he and Deputy Kerr grant my reasonable and polite request to place me under arrest.

I apologize, I would have posted early this morning had I not been hauled to a Nuthouse in an Ambulance because I'm the kind of Right-Thinking Citizen that rings up Emergency 9-1-1 when he has reason to believe that a profoundly psychotic person is well on their way to committing Vehicular Suicide or even Manslaughter.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Software Freedom Day is coming up on September 17. Events are planned around the world in most major cities. If you write free software or use free software, attend your local SFD event. Give a talk, help someone install GNU/Linux, or just hang out with other free software and open source people for a few hours. If you're attending or organizing a Software Freedom Day event, post a reply here and tell us how SFD will be celebrated in your city.

I have often heard criticism of "negative campaigning" in the free software movement. "Negative" campaigns speak out against proprietary software as opposed to "positive" campaigns which instead speak of the benefits of software freedom. This essays unpacks some of the arguments against negativity and makes the argument that negative campaigns, in some forms, can play an critical and important role in free software advocacy.

This article is written in response to the Question and Answer phase
of the NHS Scotland Open Desktop Initiative.
From the initiative's abstract:

NHSScotland is currently in the process of developing a set of standards to
support the development and building of the NHS Scotland Open Desktop.

The response takes into account the clarification of the initiative,
through the QA session, yet the response is also equally applicable advice
to any organisation wishing to have applications written that run across
a very diverse range of devices and platforms without having to develop
and maintain multiple versions of the exact same software.

Posted 2 May 2011 at 08:26 UTC (updated 2 May 2011 at 11:35 UTC) by audriusa

Spam is really a problem in many Wiki communities, often forcing at
least temporary to restrict editing rights. Most of the recent attempts
to find a solution focus around captchas and spam lists. Captchas may be
efficient to some extent; the problem is that to make them unreadable
for bots, they must be twisted enough to become also difficult for
humans to read. Lists seem less and less efficient, often accumulating
thousands
of entries and still leaving enough gaps for spammers. Spammers
frequently use the Wiki search box to check if there is already some
spam on the site - this shows that Wiki may be purely maintained and
they can add more. Hence it may make sense to implement the delayed
indexing but it also delays indexing of legitimate content. Blocking IP
addresses is also no longer useful due DHCP.

One of the solutions may be to use combined protection rather
than
relying on some single "killer" approach. The rationale is to make
spammer to invest more and more work into building the spam bot.
Requiring a complex bot does not make the attack impossible but may
statistically eliminate significant percent of spammers that are not
willing to invest enough resources.

Verse and song gave birth to thee
fearful mechanical and scientific device
Love's but a dance
of verse and song sublime to thee
A whisper, a glance, this little death --
"Shall we twirl down in Elysian
Fields ?"
Verse and song gave birth to thee
fearful mechanical and scientific device

Over the last few years, many advocates of access to information have
gathered and organized under the banner of piracy. Should FLOSS and free
culture advocates embrace advocates of piracy as comrades in arms
or condemn them? Must we choose between being either with the pirates or
against them? I believe that, unintuitively, if we take a strong
principled position in favor of information freedom and distinguish
between principles and tactics, a more nuanced "middle ground" response
to piracy is possible. On free culture and free software's terms, we can
suggest that piracy is not ethically wrong, but that it is an
shortsighted and unwise way to try to promote sharing that we should not
support.

An article
published by the BCS was brought to my attention, and it was full of
such glaring omissions and implicit attacks on free software that it had
to be dealt with. initially written as a comment, it quickly extended
way beyond the length of the original article...